Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/The quality I covet
THE QUALITY I COVET.
If there is one quality more conducive to success in all the affairs of life than another, it is—well, Cheek.
I protest that I have paced the room for a quarter of an hour like a caged hyena, and masticated my pen in a manner suited rather to a slice of the breast, than a quill out of the wing, of a goose, in my futile effort to find a legitimate name for it—Cheek.
Pray then pardon the use of a slang term; Impudence will not do, for it may exist without shrewdness: nor Self-possession, for that is a passive rather than an active virtue; nor Courage, which is often allied with modesty; nor Boldness, which a man may have without humour.
True, you may say that a man has the face to say or do anything; but that is a roundabout way of expressing oneself, and you cannot speak of his face in an allegorical sense, or call him facey.
Grant me the term, then, and I will endeavour to explain it to my young-brotherless lady readers.
Cheek, n. s. A rare union of fun, impudence, readiness, perseverance, and intelligence, endowing its possessor with the power of walking quietly over social obstacles, which form an impassable barrier to the majority of mankind. For examples, see below.
It was “cheek” that gave Diogenes the advantage over Alexander; that procured wives (it is great at that) for the early Romans; that got dear old Falstaff out of all his scrapes, enabling him to “make a good end,” instead of a parlous bad one; that procured James Boswell admission to a club and a niche in history denied to many a better man; that enabled the great Barnum to gull his fellow creatures out of one fortune, and when he had spent that, to make a second by telling his dupes, face to face, how he had done them.
When I see one enter a drawing-room full of strange ladies, sitting bolt upright round the walls, who, quite unembarrassed about what to do with his hands, can lay himself alongside a couple of beauties, and commence firing small talk into them; when I hear a man at a public dinner composedly and smilingly talk utter nonsense, about a subject upon which he is perfectly ignorant, for an hour together; when I read of a Chancellor of the Exchequer coming forward with his budget, and telling the nation that they are to go on paying the Income Tax, aye, and joking upon the fact, I am filled with envy: I fear me I could sacrifice such men did I think that the Indian theory of appropriating the qualities by devouring the hearts of great braves was of practical value.
Look at the diffident man: contemporaries who have not half his abilities pass him in the race of life; his jokes, which always fall flat, excite roars of laughter when picked up by some cheek-possessor, and retailed as his own. Any suggestion he may make relative to the trifling affairs of daily life is mostly pooh-poohed, but if tried and found to answer, is accredited to someone else, generally to the person who, in the first instance, most vehemently opposed him. He is thought by his intimate friends to be utterly devoid of taste and judgment on points upon which they have, unconsciously, adopted his opinions. As for tangible and pecuniary advantages, the cheeky carry them away from under one’s very nose. When poor Boxall gave up life and office together a short time ago, it occurred to me that the place he had vacated was the right place—salary high, work light—and that I was the right man. I therefore made an early application to the patron, Lord Bambleby, and as that nobleman was under political obligations to my family, and had on one occasion expressed the most ardent desire to forward my own personal advancement, it was not without a flutter of hope that I was ushered into his presence. And indeed his lordship received me in the most friendly manner, and was so vexed at having disposed of the place the day before, that really I felt more sorry for him than for myself.
“If you had only applied earlier!” said he. “But you see when Mr. ” and he turned to his notes, “Mr. Tryon advanced his claims there was nothing more to be said; a most deserving man, Tryon.”
Tryon! Could it be my cheeky friend Tom Tryon? I called upon him that very day, and found that it was.
“Why, Tom!” I cried, “I was not aware that you knew Lord Bambleby.”
“Know him, man? I never saw him before yesterday,” replied Tom.
“Then your claims must have been something considerable.”
“Claims! Thank goodness, I had no claims; people with claims never get anything.”
“Then how on earth did you manage to secure such a prize?”
“Simply enough. Directly I heard of poor Boxall’s death, I put my credentials—I always keep credentials by me in case of accidents—in my pocket, called upon Lord Bambleby, and made my application. ‘But you have no claims upon me, and there will be a thousand applicants who have,’ said his lordship, and he groaned at the prospect. ‘Exactly, my lord,’ said I, ‘and whichever you give it to you will offend all the rest; whereas if you get rid of it at once in my favour, you will save a world of trouble, and nine hundred and ninety-nine heartburnings.’—‘Upon my word I believe you are right,’ said he, laughing, and he gave it me.”
A few years back I was staying at a dull seaside barrack town, to see the last of a friend who was under orders for a land where human beings were much in the position of pigeons at the Red House, and their lives held in little greater estimation than those of the blue rocks, and there I made the acquaintance of a young fellow who attained my beau ideal. Long contact with the world, and much practice have developed the natural hardihood of most of my heroes; but Robert Murtough was born perfect. He was only nineteen, and had spent the greater part of his life in a secluded Irish district, but there was not a veteran in the British army more self-possessed than that ensign. It is true that his cheek was not so highly appreciated by others as by myself.
“That youngster must be taught his place,” said Captain Gibbs. “By Jove, sir, the very first night he dined at mess he chaffed the colonel!”
But Murtough did not know when he was snubbed, and could no more be kept in his place than can a monkey. I remember coming into the barrack square one morning, and seeing him at company-drill under the superintendence of Major Kerse, a cantankerous old gentleman, whose very name was enough to spoil the appetite of any other sub, but whose sarcastic remarks, vehement denunciations, and awful threats had no effect on the cheerful countenance of his present victim.
“By Bow wow wow wow, sir, will you march straight to your front! Oh my wow wow wow, look there, look there! You are not fit to wow wow wow wow; by wow wow, I’ll keep you wow wow wow. Are you drunk?” &c., &c., &c. That was how the Major’s tongue wagged incessantly.
Murtough was a smart officer enough, and was really in the present instance marching as straight as possible, but the Major never cared whether he was just or unjust, so long as he was abusing some one; at last, however, the youngster found the game become monotonous, and thinking that if he were to be blamed and punished he had better do something for it, he commenced a most erratic course, and zigzagged his company diagonally across the square, amidst the tittering of the men, and of a group of officers assembled at the window of the ante-room, near which he was finally halted by Kerse, who had been at first struck speechless, but who now galloped up, and said slowly, in a dangerous tone of concentrated passion:
“Do you mean to tell me, sir, that you did what I told you that time?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What! you chose distant and intermediate points, and marched upon their alignment?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Impossible! and what may your distant point have been?”
“That vessel, sir,” replied Murtough, with the innocence of a lamb, pointing to a packet out at sea, which was steaming by at the rate of about ten knots an hour.
“Go to your quarters, sir!” roared the Major; “I shall put you under arrest.”
A short while afterwards the adjutant came to the ensign’s room, and demanded his sword.
“Who are you?” asked the youngster.
“Who am I? Why you know me well enough. I am Brown the adjutant of your regiment.”
“How am I to know that? You are like him, certainly, but as you are not in uniform—”
“Not in uniform!” cried Brown, glancing at his dress.
“No, where are your spurs?”
And he made the adjutant go back and put his spurs on before he would give up his sword.
Poor Murtough; I lost sight of him after a few days, but I heard that shortly afterwards, having had some money left him, he exchanged into a light cavalry corps, where, the first time he was on stable duty he astonished the colonel of the crackest of all crack regiments by shouting to the men:
“Now then, there; don’t you see the colonel is coming? Be smarter; one would think you were a lot of yeomanry!” And a short time after that he narrowly escaped being tried by court-martial for charging with his troop right through a foot regiment at a review.
“Why,” said he, when asked what on earth he did that for, “you see my horse ran away with me, and I should have looked such a fool if I had halted my men, and gone on alone!”
What has become of him now I know not, his name has disappeared from the Army List, but wherever or whatever he is, I’ll warrant him prosperous: he had too much Cork about him to sink.
Such cheek as his is rarely to be met with, but I should be very well pleased if I had that of Morrison, who procured me an order for the House of Commons the other day by walking coolly into a member of parliament’s offices, and announcing himself as one of his constituents: and so he was, and had voted against him.
Dumas in “Le Véloce,” a book which gives an account of his travels in Algeria, tells certain anecdotes of those African penal battalions called the “Zephirs,” which make me long to pay a visit to a set of men whose cheek must rival their bravery. Will you have a sample of these stories? A French emigrant arriving at Bougie, where a battalion of Zephirs was stationed, and looking about for a residence, had his attention arrested by a charming new house. True that the windows were guarded by iron bars and the door at once strengthened and ornamented by large-headed nails, but this was an advantage at a time when the Kabyles were in the habit of making frequent incursions into the town. As he made these reflections, wandering round the building, and eyeing it with a covetous air, a window opened, a Zephir appeared, and across the bars the following dialogue took place.
“A charming house, soldier,” said the emigrant. “Aye, none so ugly,” replied the zephir.
“Whose is it?”
“Parbleu! his who lives in it, it seems to me.”
“Is it yours?”
“It is mine.”
“Your own property, or let on lease?”
“My own.”
“Peste! you are not badly off. There are few soldiers lodged like you.”
“Well, you see, I took advantage of a heritage which came to me, and had it built. Besides, labour is not dear in Algeria.”
“And what did this little palace cost you?”
“Twelve thousand francs.”
“Give me time, and you shall gain two thousand francs upon it.”
“Eh! eh! we may do business together. It so chances that certain misfortunes have happened which force me to sell.”
“Misfortunes?”
“Yes, my banker has just failed.”
“How lucky!”
“Hein!
“No, I mean to say how unlucky.”
“Well, how much money can you give?”
“One thousand francs down, and the rest—”
“Oh, never mind the rest. I will give you as much time as you like for that.”
“Five years?”
“That will do, five years, ten years. I want a thousand francs, that is all.”
“Then it is a bargain. I have just the thousand francs about me.”
“All right, wait for me at the wine shop.”
“I’ll go at once.”
“Only, in passing down there, look you, at the corner of the street, send me that tall fair man, he is the armourer of my regiment. I should tell you that my comrades, for a practical joke, have shut me up here and carried off the key.”
“I will send him.”
The armourer came; a consultation took place between him and the Zephir, at which a neighbouring sentry was presently called to assist; and in half an hour the contract between soldier and emigrant was drawn up and signed.
Two hours after the emigrant arrived with all his goods and chattels, and wanted to take immediate possession of—the regimental prison.
But let it not be supposed that this valuable gift of “cheek” is monopolised by the ruder sex; the fair are endowed with it to at least an equal extent, and in their case it is generally combined with a naïveté which to my mind is peculiarly delightful. The calm way in which a lady will ask an utter stranger to give himself an infinity of trouble for her, or, more frequently, for those in whom she is interested, often excites my envious admiration. If you refuse her—whether from inability or not to grant her request does not matter a straw—she is your personal enemy from that day forth; if, on the contrary, you grant her request, do not look for gratitude, women are I hardly ever grateful to strangers. But if ever you want anything for which people you know nothing about are to be canvassed, whether it be a seat in parliament, or admission into an alms-house, it is to your lady friends you must apply.
Some years ago, before the days of competitive examinations, a lady of title got a government appointment for a friend who had been petitioning and eating humble pie ineffectually for two years, by seating herself on the minister’s doorstep, and declaring she would not budge until her request was granted. What could the poor man do? He could hardly give her into custody, and no one could come in or out of the house without brushing past this guardian of the threshold, dressed in the height of fashion, her parasol up, and an admiring crowd around her. I doubt if even Murtough could have done that.
Nougaret, in his collection of anecdotes, tells a story which shows that French ladies have at least as much “cheek” as their English sisters.
Madame the Vicomtesse de Laval one morning demanded a private audience of Monsieur the president of St. Fargeau, a man of most imperturbable gravity, to whom she announced herself as having come to beg a favour which was necessary to the happiness of her life.
“Madame,” said the polite president, “you will always find me ready to”
“Promise me,” interrupted the lady, “that you will not refuse me.”
“I am certain, Madame,” he began again, “that you will only ask me for what I can grant with propriety; still you know my position. I am, more than others, required to consider the justness of my actions; I must know first what you want.”
The lady begged, prayed, wept, till the poor man, wearied out, said, “Well, I promise,” and instantly regretted the words. “Monsieur,” said the lady, calming down immediately, “I have seen many delicious head-dresses which are to be worn at the court fête next Monday; I much wish to surpass them, and have hit on the idea of a garniture of parrots’ feathers: I have laid all my friends under contribution, and since you have promised not to refuse me, I will trouble you for six feathers from the tail of that remarkably fine Polly I have seen outside your balcony.”
Has any fellow-sufferer from shyness and diffidence read thus far in hopes of meeting with some useful hints? Alas, alas, I can give him none; the cheeky man, like the poet, is born, not made; he springs into the world like Minerva, armed in a panoply of brass. For him are reserved the front seats and liver wings of life; he shoots the game and rides the hunters of his neighbour, and travels in cabs for the legitimate fare. For you and me, my friend, let us take the drumsticks of fowls, the back places of opera-boxes, the garrets of country houses, and the extortions of cabmen with smiling countenances. It is our Fate.